Offspring (33 page)

Kendi set down the pad and knelt next to the chair with his hand on Harenn’s stomach. He felt the movement beneath his palm.

“Hi, Baby,” he said as he always did. “I’m your Da.”

“Bedj-ka is becoming more and more impatient,” Harenn said. “He wants very much to be an older brother.”

“We’ll have to remind him of that when he’s a teenager and complains about getting stuck babysitting,” Kendi grinned.

The baby stopped moving. Kendi stood up and surveyed the walls. “All right. We’ll go with the underwater theme.”

Ben poked his head into the room. “Hey you guys—Gretchen’s here.”

“What? Isn’t she on surveillance duty?” Kendi said.

“She said she left early because she has big news, but she won’t spill until we’re all there. Hurry up!”

“Help me out of this chair,” Harenn said. “Medical science may have overcome many of the discomforts associated with pregnancy, but the laws of physics have not changed one bit.”

Kendi gave her a hand and they headed for the living room. Kendi’s curiosity was piqued. He had almost been ready to give up the surveillance on Foxglove’s people as a bad job. Still, he kept his excitement in check. They had had false alarms before, and this was probably one of them.

One look at Gretchen changed his mind. She was pacing about the living like a nervous blond lion, a mixture of excitement and agitation playing across her square-cut face. Ben was sitting on the edge of the sofa beside Tan.

“All right, Gretch,” Kendi said. “We’re here. What’s going on?”

“I was following Foxglove up-close and personal instead of using the spider-cams,” she began. “I saw him go into the house he uses in Treetown, and there weren’t any reporters around. A while later, he snuck out the back door by himself. Not even a bodyguard. He was wearing a rain hat and sunglasses, and I only knew it was him because I recognized the way he walks.”

“Cut to the chase,” Tan said. “Some of us are old.”

“Right.” Gretchen took a deep breath. “He took the monorail and a gondola to a little house near the border of Treetown and the monastery. He went inside. I climbed up a level and watched from there. “bout half an hour later, this woman came out.”

She tapped her data pad and conjured up the image of a Ched-Balaar.

“She looks familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her, so I did a computer search. Ben’s face-recognition software turned up an ID image. She’s a judicial clerk at the High Court.”

“So?” Kendi said.

“So?” Gretchen’s tone was incredulous. “Don’t you see what this means? It means Foxglove has connections with someone at the High Court who probably knew what the mining rights decision was going to be several days before it was officially handed down.”

“In other words, he knew how the Court voted before the decision was made public,” Kendi said. “Which is why he bought all those mining companies when he did. He
knew
they’d be worth billions.”

“It’s the source of all that money,” Gretchen said, “and how he managed to buy Othertown in everything but name.”

“It’s not enough evidence to bring any kind of charges,” Ben mused. “Though Grandma can probably use it. Did you get any images of him going into the house?”

“Yeah.” Gretchen grimaced. “But he was in disguise and you can’t really tell it’s him. Won’t hold up. But now that we know where to search, we can
find
evidence.”

“Nice work,” Tan rasped. “I don’t suppose you got any footage of Foxglove leaving the house? Maybe he’s recognizable.”

“Not really,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you.” She tapped the data pad and the scene with the holographic house sped up. The house’s door popped open and Gretchen returned the image to normal speed. A human in a rain hat and a long coat emerged, turned to speak briefly with a barely-visible figure in the doorway, and walked away.

“See?” Gretchen said. “You can’t tell for sure that—”

Ben leaped out of his chair. “Back that thing up! Back it
up
!”

“Ben?” Kendi said. “What’s wrong?”

In answer he snatched the pad away from a startled Gretchen and reset the image to the beginning. “gain Foxglove emerged from the house in his rain hat. Ben froze the hologram, then zoomed in and enlarged it. His lips were drawn into a tight line.

“Ben, what—?” Kendi began.

“Shut up,” Ben snapped. “I just have to—oh. Oh my god.”

He set the pad on the coffee table and backed away as if it were a bomb. Kendi and the others turned to look. Harenn and Tan looked puzzled. Kendi gasped. The display showed the image of an old man, hawk-nosed and white-haired.

“It can’t be,” Kendi whispered. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Who is it?” Tan demanded. “I don’t recognize—”

“It’s Padric Sufur,” Ben said. “The bastard who killed my mother.”

“Enemies, like lovers, always eventually meet.”

—Daniel Vik

No one spoke for a long time. Finally Gretchen said, “That’s what he looks like? I’ve never seen him before.”

“I’d recognize him with my eyes shut,” Ben said in a cold and terrible voice that speared Kendi with alarm. “Gretchen, what’s the address? Where can we find him?”

“All right, all right,” Kendi said. “We aren’t going to do anything just yet.”

Ben’s jaw tightened so hard it looked like granite. He sat on the sofa, rigid as a statue with an explosive inside. Kendi swallowed and turned back to the hologram. It was definitely Padric Sufur.

Kendi had never actually met Sufur. Neither had Ben. But some time after Ara’s death, Ben had dug around the computer systems and produced several images of him. He hadn’t said why, and Kendi, still caught in the throes of his own grief, hadn’t pressed for details. He had simply assumed Ben had wanted to put a face to the name.

Padric was one of the wealthiest—perhaps even
the
wealthiest—being in the known galaxy. He had funded a laboratory that used the genes of Sejal’s father Prasad to produce twisted Silent children. Their Silence had been as powerful as their bodies had been monstrous, and when they came into their full power, they set out to destroy the Dream forever. This was as Sufur had wanted it. In his view, the Dream was the chief source of warfare, allowing commanders to communicate with their troops over interplanetary distances. Destroying the Dream would be the same as destroying war. Unfortunately, Sufur had been unaware that destroying the Dream would also create a backlash that would, over time, destroy all sentient life everywhere.

When Sufur’s destructive children attacked the Dream, the first thing they had done was remove every Silent in the universe from the Dream. A great many went insane at the separation. Large numbers had committed suicide out of despair. Kendi had almost been one of them, but Ben and Harenn had gotten to him in time.

They had not gotten to Ara. Ben had discovered her broken body on the forest floor, shattered from the leap she had taken off her own balcony.

The Vajhur family, meanwhile, had managed to put the twisted children’s bodies into stasis chambers, effectively snatching them out of the Dream before they could fully destroy it. The stasis chambers currently lay on the ocean floor on the planet Rust, forgotten by everyone except the Vajhur family, Kendi, and Ben. The team of geneticists that had created the children for Padric Sufur were either dead or fled. Padric Sufur himself had been nowhere near Rust during the Despair and had escaped unscathed but for the loss of his Silence. Kendi knew Sufur numbered among the Silenced because Kendi had personally scoured the Dream for the man’s presence and found not a single trace.

Now, however, he was apparently living on Bellerophon. Kendi rubbed his chin, feeling oddly calm. Ara had been both mentor and mother to Kendi, and by all rights Kendi should be the one rushing out the door to confront Sufur—or worse. Instead he felt perfectly in control, his mind cool and calculating. Why had Sufur come to Treetown? What possible business could he have here? And why was he consorting with Mitchell Foxglove?

“Let’s blow the lid off him,” Gretchen said. “Call the Guardians, call the police, call the feeds. They’ll be all over him. Or I can take him out. One shot’s all I need.”

“Stand in line,” Tan said without a trace of irony or humor, and Kendi remembered that Sufur’s plan had Silenced both Tan and Gretchen.

“No,” Kendi said. “We aren’t going to kill him.”

“Why the hell not?” Gretchen demanded.

“We need learn what he’s up to,” Kendi said. “Look, I hate him as much as you do—”

Gretchen rose to a terrible height. Her face was red beneath yellow hair. “How the
fuck
can you say that to me, Weaver?
You
can still reach the Dream.
You
kept your career.
You
are still Silent. Sufur took everything away from me. Every
fucking
thing I had—my Silence, my job, my friends. I don’t care how many game contracts you arrange because you feel guilty, you don’t have the right to hate him as much as I do. You
never
have the right. I want Sufur dead. I want to watch him squirm and shit blood at my feet before I crush his throat, and I want to record it so I can watch it over and over again and laugh my fucking head off while everyone I know pisses on his grave.”

Gretchen’s face had turned blotchy. Her entire body vibrated like a violin string, and her tirade all but pushed Kendi into his chair. Kendi firmed his jaw. She was being insubordinate, rash, and stubborn.

She was also right. Kendi couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose his Silence and loved ones both. A twinge of the guilt Gretchen had mentioned pinched at him.

“I’m not denying you the right to be...
angry
isn’t a strong enough word, I think,” Kendi said quietly. “And I agree that Sufur is a filthy animal that needs to be put down. Maybe even we—you—will be the one to do it. But he’s here on Bellerophon for a reason, and I can’t imagine it’s to help the Children of Irfan. The last time Sufur had a plan, he nearly destroyed all life everywhere. We need to find out what he’s trying to pull.”

“If we kill him,” Ben said in that same chilly voice, “his plan will die, too.”

“Not necessarily,” Harenn said, speaking for the first time. “He may have people who can carry it out after his death. I have to say that in comparison to you three, I have lost almost nothing to Sufur, but I am no stranger to loss and anger. I understand your need to see him pay for his crimes, but I must also agree with Kendi. More people on Bellerophon have reason to hate Sufur than on any other known planet—except, perhaps, the Ched-Balaar homeworld—and it would be foolish in the extreme for him to come here without a very pressing purpose. We must uncover it.”

“And then what?” Gretchen said.

“And then you can see to his punishment,” Harenn said. “I will not stand in your way. I will also point out, however, that it may be more satisfying to see him punished while he lives. If he dies, his punishment is short-lived. If you leave him alive, there are any number of ways to make him regret what he has done.”

Kendi remembered the revenge Harenn had taken on her ex-husband, the man who had sold Bedj-ka into slavery, and he shuddered.

“Point,” Tan growled.

“Maybe we should just tell everyone that he’s here,” Gretchen said. “See how long before someone gets lucky.”

“Be impossible for him to operate here,” Tan said. “Too many people watching.”

“No!” Kendi said. “If we do that, Sufur will just disappear. Now that we know where he is, we can keep an eye on him, figure out what he’s up to. Harenn, let’s change the surveillance schedule and have Sufur watched around the clock.”

“As you wish.”

“The rest of you keep
quiet
about this,” Kendi warned. “Not one word, not a hint to anyone.”

“I don’t need to talk to him to see him dead,” Gretchen said.

Ben stared out into the night, hard and unmoving as a rock. Kendi stepped out onto the balcony, uncertain and a bit frightened. He hadn’t seen Ben this worked up since Ara’s death.

The winter air was damp and chilly, and Kendi could see his breath. Only a few night animals made faint calls to each other. Most of the dinosaurs had migrated to warmer climates, the plant eaters taking the lead with the meat eaters following close behind. The holiday season would arrive soon, beginning with Three Drink Night, after which came Ghost Eve and the Drum and Tooth Revel. Irfan’s Birthday came next. Kendi didn’t much feel like celebrating, though a relentless cheer seemed to have swept up everyone else in Treetown. There was even talk of adding a new holiday to commemorate Mitchell Foxglove’s announcement that children were returning to the Dream. Kendi ground his teeth at the thought. History would record the event as Foxglove’s triumph instead of as a theft. Kendi didn’t want or need any more fame, but he hated the idea of the truth going unrecorded. For an irrational moment he wondered if history had maligned Daniel Vik just as it was exalting Mitchell Foxglove.

Kendi laid a tentative hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben didn’t react. Kendi hugged him from behind, but it was like embracing a stone.